Patrick Waters 
This week we’ll go over the Rocket Mortgage Classic from last week and get you ready for the upcoming 3M Open right here on WIN DAILY.
Recap of the Rocket Mortgage Classic
Raise your hand if you had Nate Lashley in your player pool. Don’t worry about it, no one did. DraftKings never added him, so it’s not your fault. Past him though, the top of the leaderboard was a mixed bag of players you may not have expected: Redman, Roach and Potter to name a few.
The Insight Sheet’s results were par (pun intended) for the industry average on the week. Out of the 24 players in my personal player pool, only 14 made the cut. It did include Top 25 players such as Danny Lee (3%), Sepp Straka (4%) and Patrick Reed (8%). This is the first week that my personal player pool did not include the winner (second place this week). We’ll look to right the ship at the new 3M Open.
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The Basics
Course: TPC Twin Cities
Par: 71
Length: 7,468
Greens: Bent, Larger than tour average (Cannot find true yardage at this point)
Fairways: Wider than tour average (Some holes, 35 – 40 yards wide)
Architect: Arnold Palmer
Course Fit
Like last week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, the 3M Open is a brand new stop on the tour. The tournament will be held at the TPC Twin Cities course located north of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The venue was a 17-year staple on the Champions tour (2001 – 2018). For the last seven years on the senior tour TPC Twin Cities ranked first or second in birdies. Similar to last week, I fully expect the 3M Open to be a birdie fest.
With low scoring almost guaranteed, we want to look at courses with easy scoring layouts. The Top 10 in Strokes Gained Total and their collective DraftKings points for such layouts are displayed below.
Fairway width and location of hazards is a huge part of scoring. Golfers having the ability to choose where to land the ball instead of forcing a shot is crucial. This chart shows the Top 10 in SG: TOT and DK points for easy to hit fairways.
Putting will be vital for golfers to succeed this week at the 3M Open. Below are the Top 10 golfers in SG: Putting (bent grass) and their respective putting baselines.
This article was written before prices are available. Based off these three charts above though, I would take a serious look at Jason Day.
Player Fit – Back End
Below we’ll find the official scorecard from the PGA media guide.
With the anticipation of a low scoring affair, we’ll need to determine which holes to target for a birdie attempt. After reading Chris Hollander’s write up on Twitter, I agree with his assessment. Chris recognizes that holes 1, 4-6, 10, 12, 16 and 18 should all play below par this week. Four of them are Par 4’s with a distance of 400 – 450 yards (six on the course total). The remaining scoring holes are Par 5’s between the distance of 550 – 600 yards and one Par 3.
Golfers who put themselves in position to score DK points will be key to our player pools. For that measure, we’ll include Opportunity Gained and Strokes Gained Putting (bent grass).
The chart above shows the Top 10 ranked in the model with all of the categories listed. Day’s name once again pops up along with DeChambeau and Finau showing up several times.
Final Recap
With the 3M Open, at TPC Twin Cities, becoming a new stop for the PGA tour, drawing data was scarce. Last week with the unknown, I weighted my model to be very balanced, more so than normal. Unfortunately it did not have the greatest success. With similar conditions to last week I’ll be tilting my model to be more birdie/point heavy. Performing this action will hopefully provide a better player pool to choose from.
Course Setup:
Easy to score
Easy to hit fairways
Bent grass greens
Player efficiencies:
Opportunity gained
Par 4 scoring: 400 – 450 yards
Par 5 scoring: 550 – 600 yards
Strokes gained putting
Thanks for reading and I hope this article is a great starting place for your DFS research. Look out for the Insight Sheet dropping Wednesday. It will include my model’s Top 50 with Data Golf World Rankings, Vegas Odds, and analysis on my personal player pool.
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Please leave a comment below or reach out on Twitter if you found this helpful and any questions you may have.
Stats source: FantasyNational
